HYDROLITH

2 LITH
HYDRO
SURREALIST RESEARCH
&
INVESTIGATIONS
Hydrolith 2: Surrealist Research and Investigations.
Front cover image by John Adams
Title page image by Alexandra Halkias: “She Spirits 2”
Back cover image by Miguel Corrales
Many thanks to the following for their
editorial advice, suggestions and/or proofreading:
John Adams, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Mary Behm-Steinberg,
Séamas Cain, Chuck Fahrenbach, Parry Harnden,
Dale Houstman, Richard Misiano-Genovese,
Noé Ortega Quijano, Laurens Vancrevel, Rick Waara.
Copyright © 2014
ISBN: 978-0-578-15792-4
Additional copies of this book can be ordered from LuLu:
http://www.lulu.com
Oyster Moon Press is a non-profit, surrealist publishing co-op that
originated in Berkeley, California.
www.oystermoonpress.com
Table of Contents
Chymical Preface .............................................................................................................................. 7
Bruno Jacobs: Surrealism and the Cultural Sphere .......................................................................... 9
Beatriz Hausner: The Secret Life of Plants ....................................................................................... 11
Ribitch: Storytelling, Subversion and the Pure Language of Children ............................................. 15
Ali Mete Sancaktaroðlu: Collages ..................................................................................................... 19
Peter Dubé: To Call the Fair People to Your Aid and Succor .......................................................... 20
Seéamas Cain: The Geography of Surrealist Revolt ......................................................................... 21
Jean-Clarence Lambert: The Anti-Legend of Our Age ...................................................................... 23
Surrealist Survival Kits ..................................................................................................................... 27
The Surrealist Group of Madrid: Chronical of the Object Event ...................................................... 44
Hans Plomp: Keyhole to Other Realities .......................................................................................... 51
Turkish Surrealist Group: Revolt: The Game of the New Millennium .............................................. 53
Eugenio Castro: The Sun Rises at Night: Sketches of the 2011 Revolt of Madrid ............................ 55
Sol Lycantrophes: The Dangers of Puerilizing the Movement ......................................................... 63
Rafet Arslan: The 21st Century Resists the 20th Century ................................................................. 65
St. Louis Surrealist Group: Ferguson 2014....................................................................................... 70
Antonio Ramírez: Dead Time ............................................................................................................ 71
Inner Island Surrealist Group: Funeral of Empire Manifesto ........................................................... 74
Will Alexander: The Density Paintings ............................................................................................. 75
Merl Fluin: In Praise of Infighting .................................................................................................... 99
Eric Bragg: Infighting Is Miserabilist and Stupid ............................................................................. 101
Josse De Haan: Frozen Moonlight in Two Hands ............................................................................. 111
Andrew Torch: Winter Poem ............................................................................................................. 116
Dale Houstman: Biased History ........................................................................................................ 117
Rodrigo Hernández: Lamentations of the Ludopath ......................................................................... 118
Wijnand Steemers: Mosquito Prayers: a Manifesto ......................................................................... 120
Richard Misiano-Genovese: Skull Castle: The Last Bastion ............................................................ 122
Alexandra Halkias: One Day in the Year of a Box ............................................................................ 125
Yannis Xourias: Poems ...................................................................................................................... 126
Josie Malinowski: The Practice of the Night .................................................................................... 128
John Adams: Poems .......................................................................................................................... 133
Rafet Arslan: Poems .......................................................................................................................... 134
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Saint Louis Group: Q&A ....................................................................................................................... 136
John Adams: Velocity .............................................................................................................................. 138
Sotère Torregian: Three Poems ............................................................................................................... 139
Peter Dubé: To Make Your Voice Heard in Other Worlds ....................................................................... 145
Zuca Sardan: Primordial Egg ................................................................................................................. 146
Hans Plomp: The Beast Is Loose ............................................................................................................ 147
Peter Dubé: To Know a Distant Happening ............................................................................................ 148
Laurens Vancrevel: The Demon of Paradise: A Dantesque Dream ........................................................ 149
Nikos Stabakis: The Mysteries of the Minotaur ..................................................................................... 154
Pieter Schermer: The Rendez-vous ......................................................................................................... 157
Richard Misiano-Genovese: The Eternal Return-Fire for Fire .............................................................. 167
Andrew Joron: To the Third Power ......................................................................................................... 169
Dale Houstman: Three Poems ................................................................................................................ 172
Gaétan Blais & David Nadeau: Two Poems ........................................................................................... 176
Dan Stanciu: Warm Acts ......................................................................................................................... 177
Javier Gálvez: The Veiled Language ....................................................................................................... 179
David Nadeau & Pascale Dubé: Collages .............................................................................................. 182
J. Karl Bogartte: The Poetic Method ....................................................................................................... 184
Eugenio Castro, Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero & Noé Ortega: The Language to Come .......................... 189
Merl Fluin: Lord Peter in the City of Jackdaws ..................................................................................... 192
Rafet Arslan: Flight Surgery ................................................................................................................... 194
Ayşe Özkan: Cyclops ............................................................................................................................... 197
Surrealist London Action Group: Mutus Liber ....................................................................................... 199
Paul Cowdell: Every Man His Own Fantômas: Or, Away with Nostalgia ............................................. 205
Paul Bogaers: A Further Investigation into the Photography of Thoughts .............................................206
Richard Waara: / Cubomania .................................................................................................................. 209
Jesús Garcia Rodríguez: 30 Proverbs of the Dessert Fathers ................................................................ 210
Sergio Lima: The Image as Knowledge .................................................................................................. 211
Rik Lina: The Cheerful Chaos of Collective Automatic Invention ......................................................... 213
Cins: Monster .......................................................................................................................................... 216
Her de Vries: Photographs ..................................................................................................................... 217
Noé Ortega Quijano: Suicidal Objects ................................................................................................... 218
Richard Misiano-Genovese: The Conceptualizations of Imagery and the Introduction of Cruelty ....... 223
Sergio Lima: Images of Liberty .............................................................................................................. 226
Sasha Vlad: Object Magic Revealed in a Dream .................................................................................... 228
Miguel de Carvalho: The Collage: An Amalgamation of Ideas as a Method of Self-Definition ............ 230
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Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero: Defending Useless Aspects of Urban Objectology .............................. 232
Sotiris Liontos: In Pulverem Mortis .................................................................................................. 234
Josie Malinowski: Inner Animals: An Introduction .......................................................................... 236
Wijnand Steemers: Poems ................................................................................................................. 238
Sharon Olson: The Healer ................................................................................................................. 240
Hande Koçak: Triology along with Eluard ....................................................................................... 242
María Santana & Antonio Ramírez: The Unexpected Object ........................................................... 246
Xtian: The Micturating Angel............................................................................................................ 249
Pierre Petiot: For a Surrealist Use of Technology ............................................................................ 264
Parry Harnden: We Live in Simple Times .......................................................................................... 269
José Manuel Rojo: Consequences of the Misuse of Electricity ......................................................... 273
Eric Bragg: Epigenetics and the Mad-Genius ................................................................................... 283
John Barrett Erickson: Micro-Seizures and Missed Apprehensions .................................................. 327
Michael Löwy: Dues Ex Machina .................................................................................................... 330
José Manuel Rojo: Reality of Revolt, Reasons for Utopia ................................................................ 332
Michael Löwy: José Carlos Mariategui and Surrealism .................................................................. 343
Ali Kartal: Deja Vu Nightmares ........................................................................................................ 345
Noé Ortega Quijano & Eugenio Castro: Allucinatio Insulae ............................................................ 346
Ribitch: String Stories ....................................................................................................................... 349
5
6
Chymical Preface
This second issue of Hydrolith is a continuation of what the first volume started, which was and is to
assemble a stimulating selection of exclusively recent work by groups and individuals of the international
Surrealist movement, to facilitate intellectual exchange and collaboration, enabling us to concentrate the echoes
of our commonalities as well as the shadows of our differences. In so doing, this volume aspires to reduce all
manner of distances that exist between us. All works in this book are in English, while many of them are
translations from the Dutch, French, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Turkish languages.
When comparing the editorial structures of the two volumes, we might say that both are experiments in
organizing (at least organization to the extent that people from different cultural backgrounds might come
together to work on a project), such that the first issue was informally modeled after the peer-review strategy
as is found in many professional and academic settings today, with six of us as editors, using an online forum
to reach consensus with regards to editorial decisions. While such a strategy was effective enough to gradually
nudge the project to a state of completion, it was both time-consuming and socially challenging. The experimental
strategy for this second volume, however, differs from its predecessor in that the editorial structure was far more
decentralized, with whatever groups and collectives making their own editorial decisions about what to include,
with a selected liaison for each group to interact with yours truly in order to put the issue together. It remains
to be indicated, particularly by our readers, which (or neither) of these two approaches is the more desirable.
But regardless of the ultimate effectiveness of each, our goal has always been to make a collection of current
surrealist work whose inclusion was the result of several minds working together, rather than just one.
As with the previous issue of Hydrolith, three main themes have been chosen – initially suggested by the
group liaisons – for this second volume: Science, Utopia and Monsters. Although material for these themes
hasn’t been thoroughly partitioned as one might expect to find with distinct chapters in a book, they are instead
loosely clustered together, perhaps even with a little bit of overlap between them, as one might imagine.
So in light of these considerations, as alchemists of the sublime, and while renewed in solidarity, we
surrealists gather here with our marvelous water stones and unmarked vials of poetic elixirs, searching to
uncover the means to restore to human context all that remains hidden within the shadow’s shadow, as well
as to confront that which lurks under the veil of miserabilism and boredom. We take this moment to affirm
that surrealism is not just one idea or one inspiration or one action, but a world of ideas, thoughts, refusals,
inspirations, playful musings, actions and great poetic potential. While we as surrealists, as a loosely organized
collective, may not always agree how best to deal with the contemporary drudgery and misery of late capitalism,
which also includes the global, ongoing ecological crisis, it should be the overall vision of and commitment to
revolution, to the radical transformation of life and reality and all the inbetweens, that brings us together and
which should remind us more about what we have in common rather than what sets us apart from each other. In
this sense we declare our agreement with the signatories of that surrealist manifesto from 1974, “Lighthouse of
the Future”, when they stated that,
“Pessimism exists only to be carried as far as it will go... Whatever else we may be, we are not mourners of
false steps along the endless escalators of lost time... Life is boring, society is boring, art is boring; above all,
boredom is boring... Only by despairing, and then despairing of despair, can mankind begin truly to see and to
act consciously in the service of the marvelous. This preliminary violation of the rules prepares the way for an
entirely new game, our game, known as subversion, sublime love, the exaltation of freedom...”*
Therefore we affirm, 40 years later, that capitalist boredom is still impossibly boring (especially now in
its “wireless” iteration), adding also that pessimism in itself is boring, and that Hydrolith 2 is no less than a
contribution to that “entirely new game” anticipated by some as subversion, mad love and freedom. Isn’t it time
for a change?
Ribitch & Eric Bragg
October 31, 2014
* “Manifesto: Lighthouse of the Future”. City Lights Anthology. City Lights Books: San Francisco. 1974. Pp. 203-6.
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Contributors to HYDROLITH 2
John Adams AUSTIN, TEXAS
Will Alexander LOS ANGELES
Miguel Almagro LONDON
Rafet Arslan ISTANBUL
Mary Behm-Steinberg BERKELEY
Johannes Bergmark STOCKHOLM/SZCZECIN
Gaétan Blais QUEBEC CITY
Paul Bogaers NETHERLANDS
J.Karl Bogartte SANTA FE
Erik Bohman STOCKHOLM
Daniel Boyer MICHIGAN
Eric Bragg BERKELEY
Richard Burke ST LOUIS
Susan Burke ST LOUIS
Séamas Cain DUNGIVEN, NORTHERN IRELAND
Miguel de Carvalho COIMBRA
Eugenio Castro MADRID
Cins ISTANBUL
David Coulter BERKELEY
Paul Cowdell LONDON
Miguel Corrales TENERIFE
Josse de Haan HENDAYE, FRANCE
Her de Vries NETHERLANDS
Pascale Dubé QUEBEC CITY
Peter Dubé MONTREAL
Jonas Enander STOCKHOLM
John Barrett Erickson MINNEAPOLIS
Alexandre Fatta QUEBEC CITY
Merl Fluin LONDON
Mattias Forshage STOCKHOLM
Javier Gálvez MADRID
Jesús García Rodríguez MADRID
Richard Misiano-Genovese FLORIDA
Jesse Gentes CUMBERLAND, BC
Guy Girard PARIS
Yannis Golfinopoulos ATHENS
Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero SANTANDER
Alexandra Halkias ATHENS
Parry Harnden CANADA
Beatriz Hausner TORONTO
Aniano Henrique LONDON
Patrick Hourihan LONDON
Dale Houstman MINNEAPOLIS
Stuart Inman LONDON
Bruno Jacobs CÁDIZ
Alex Januário SÃO PAULO
Andrew Joron BERKELEY
Andrew Juris BERKELEY
Diamantis Karavolas ATHENS
Ali Kartal IZMIR
Chris King ST LOUIS
Hande Koçak ISTANBUL
Vangelis Koutalis ATHENS
Giannis Ksourias ATHENS
Yannis Ksourias ATHENS
Jean-Clarence Lambert DRACY, FRANCE
Timothy Layden LONDON
Sergio Lima SÃO PAULO
Rik Lina FIGUEIRA DE FOZ, PORTUGAL
Sotiris Liontos ATHENS
Michael Löwy PARIS
Destanne Lundquist CUMBERLAND, BC
Josie Malinowski LONDON
Lurdes Martínez MADRID
Elias Melios ATHENS
Lefki Mossou ATHENS
David Nadeau QUEBEC CITY
Sheila Nopper DENMAN ISLAND
Sharon Olson GRASS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
Noé Ortega Quijano SANTANDER
Ayşe Özkan ISTANBUL
Pierre Petiot PARIS
Rodrigo Hernández Piceros SANTIAGO, CHILE
Hans Plomp AMSTERDAM
Antonio Ramírez SEVILLE
Jörg Remé AMSTERDAM
Ribitch BERKELEY
Wendy Risteska LONDON
José Manuel Rojo MADRID
Ron Sakolsky, DENMAN ISLAND
Ali Mete Sancaktaroðlu ISTANBUL
María Santana SEVILLE
Zuca Sardan HAMBURG, GERMANY
Pieter Schermer NETHERLANDS
Shibek PORTLAND
Lisa Simmonson BERKELEY
Nikos Stabakis ATHENS
Dan Stanciu BUCHAREST
Wijnand Steemers NETHERLANDS
Wedgwood Steventon ENGLAND
Andrew Torch ST LOUIS
Sotère Torregian STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA
Laurens Vancrevel NETHERLANDS
Bastiaan Van der Velden THE HAGUE
Sasha Vlad SAN FRANCISCO
Richard Waara VACAVILLE
Marianna Xanthopoulou ATHENS
Yannis Xourias ATHENS
Xtian MELBOURNE
Onston [Can Yeşiloğlu] IZMIR
Zazie VIENNA
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